Quick hello!

Sneaking a quick blog in before I'm off to bed. It was a very long Monday! With the weather as beautiful as it was today, it made it very hard to be stuck inside. I walked outside on both of my breaks. I still feel pretty gimpy because I'm still walking slower than what I usually do. I spent the day at work and Allen spent the day catching up on his sleep. He had to work until 2:00 a.m. this morning, so he basically didn't have a weekend. We did go over to mom and dad's for dinner on Sunday. We attempted to fly a kite with Caleb, but that didn't go so well. The wind wasn't steady enough. It had been windy all day yesterday until we decided to fly a kite...go figure. Maybe we will have better luck next weekend. Well, my little sisters baby shower is this weekend. Hard to believe I'm going to be an aunt in less than two months!!!

My poor hubby had his lunch STOLEN!

Well, the house in Hannibal was a bust...nasty dirty carpets and teeny tiny. We will stay where we are, in fact sitting on our little front porch this evening, we realized that we don't really want to move as bad as we had been talking about. Yes, living in Hannibal has many perks that make a lot of sense, but so does Quincy. We've decided we are going to keep our eye on the Hannibal paper for rentals, but we're not going to actively seek something. If we're patient and we save our money, we will be able to buy a house, which is what we want anyways. Also, yes, we are paying quite a bit more for rent here in Quincy than what we would probably pay in Hannibal, but we have central heat and air, and have been told that the electric rates in Hannibal are outrageously high. Finding another place that has central heat and air that accepts pets is probably going to be next to impossible.

We had dinner with Grandma Hazel tonight at Hy Vee. She's back from Florida. It was good to see her, haven't seen in her in three whole months!

Someone stole Allen's lunch box this morning, but returned it to him this evening. They must have just grabbed the wrong lunch box. I'm glad because I was seriously appalled at the thought of another full grown adult stealing someone else's lunch at work like that! Geez!

UGH MONDAYS!

Monday, why can't you be more like Friday?

We are going to look at a house tomorrow in Hannibal, MO! The rent would be $110 cheaper than what we are paying now and is still a two bedroom house with a basement and a plus we don't have now...a one car garage! It's in a very nice part of town, and would be a quiet street. Can't tell for sure, but according to Google maps, looks like it doesn't have any houses immediately behind it. Talked to the landlord this evening and he seems like a pretty nice guy, and he didn't have any problem with pets. He said he used to have problems, but then his daughter got a miniature schnauzer and he changed his mind seeing how much she loves her dog. He told me that this little house is like "an Easter egg, when someone finds it, they just snatch it up..." LOL! Kind of cheesy, but he was very easy to talk to and I didn't catch any fast talker sleazy vibes from him at all. If we move into this house we would be my Aunt's neighbor. No, the house isn't right next to hers, but it is the same house number as theirs, just a different street, about three blocks behind her house. Obviously I'm not going to give the address away here online...not safe...but if this pans out we may be Missouri residents before the end of April! This landlord said he wouldn't have a problem just holding the place w/ out charging us rent if we wanted to go ahead and lay down our deposit since we seriously just mailed our April rent check today. He said that we could move in when we were able to and he would pro-rate the rent. He seems to be very on the up and up too. Said he has just had the place inspected by the insurance guys and has a cerfificate of being able to rent it out, if we wanted to see it. Told us we could paint and he would pay for the paint if we didn't like the colors of the walls. He also pays for trash pick up, which is nice because for whatever reason Hannibal does not have a city wide trash pickup system like Quincy does. I am a little saddened by this, because I have become very used to using our wonderful orange recycling container to reduce our actual trash.

Winter...this is us...IGNORING YOU!

Can't believe that nasty weather we had all day yesterday and all night last night. BLEH! So, today, to spite winter I have been looking at information on one my new (as of last year) favorite things to do in the spring/summer is got the Farmer's Market! YAY! There are three that I'm interested in. One of course in Quincy, one in Hannibal, and last but not least Columbia's farmers market. Quincy and Hannibal's markets don't start until May. The Columbia, MO market had it's opening day yesterday. Now you might ask why the heck I would be interested in the COMO Market. Well, it's very close to Sturgeon, so we could just pop over on Saturday morning to check it out before we visit Allen's parents. Phil and Brenda, Matt, and Nicole might even want to go with us. It would be fun! It is one of the very largest in the state of Missouri and has won all kinds of awards. I saw pictures online and it looks like it goes on and on forever! I've checked out their website and they even accept FOOD STAMPS at their farmers market! That's right! In fact the website encourages the people on food stamps to use their stamps to purchase the fresh produce and plants so that they can have better nutrition and their own garden for more self sufficiency! I think this is a pretty neat idea.

Hope everyone had a great weekend despite winter's desperate attempt to stick around.

Dear Winter...

Dear Winter,

I know that you probably just didn't get the memo or something, but 2010 is one of those wierd years when Spring does actually begin on March 20 and seeing as how that is today...how do I say this nicely...GET LOST!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sincerely,

The Cooleys

P.S. Seriously...it's over...you need to move on!

Daisy, Daisy...

So, I'm getting wellness rewards from work and so is Allen. We purchased a treadmill with a little bit of help from my mom a year ago, and now we are going to buy bicycles! Which I am SUPER excited about. We were going to get them last year, but then we decided to go ahead and get the treadmill, which I'm glad we did, but now we are for sure going to buy bikes. We've already done some research and there are several very neat bike trails down in Columbia. We will probably get a basket for one of our bikes so Penny can come with. Only thing is I haven't been on a bike in....oh...probably 12 years. I guess we will find out if it's true that you never forget how to ride a bicycle. I called a nurse today to talk about my ankle to find out what kind of exercise I can do, and she said low impact exercises, like swimming or biking. When she suggested the biking, I bet she didn't know it's been over a decade. LOL! In all seriousness, the ankle is on the mend...swelling has gone down considerably. It's still swollen enough I can't just wear a tennis shoe but I'm not wearing the boot any more, been wearing the dumb aircast for the past couple days. We went to Wal-Mart tonight and bought me just a regular wrap around ankle support that I can wear with tennis shoes. I'm thinking I will try it tomorrow, I probably will just take the shoe lace out of my right shoe.

Allen is scheduled to work overtime on Sunday as of right now, which is gonna kill the weekend, and they are scheduled to work Easter Sunday. This is still subject to change though, because he was scheduled to work this past Sunday and then they didn't have to. The extra money will be nice, but... :( .

Random product review: If you are looking for something new to put on your veggies instead of butter Weber (yes the grill brand) has these spices called Grill Creations. We purchased some Zesty Lemon Seasoning and it is awesome!!! We both love it alot. I would highly recommend it. I'm also thinking it's gonna be really great on some Tilapia!

P.S. Extra credit points, the super awesome kind, to anyone who can complete the "Title" song in the Chatbox! :)

Good times at the Cooleys

Even though it was a very short weekend in Sturgeon, we really had a great time. This time Dustin and Jessica were there too. Jessica wasn't there for the whole evening because she was spending time with her mom, but it was really good to get to see her for even a little while. It was so good to see everyone. We had a great time playing our new game "The Game of Things" which we HAD to buy immediately following the Cheese party we went to Friday night at our friend Becky's apartment. What a good time. We met some pretty cool people, ate a lot of cheese, and played two our of our new favorite games! Curses and The Game of Things. It's in the same fold as Apples To Apples, only in both Allen's and my opinion much more fun! :) Was fun between friends and ended up being hilarious among family members.

The ankle is still on the mend. You can still call me FAT FOOT, can't wear tennis shoes, or at least not both of them yet, but hopefully very soon.

Hope everyone else had a great weekend.

A little behind...

So, again I'm behind on the whole blogging thing. It's been a VERY long week since I last blogged. Nothing super exciting to report. Work work work and a sprained ankle. Messed it up pretty bad. First beautiful Saturday of the year, decided to play tennis with the brothers, BIG MISTAKE! :( I'm very sad because I was SOOOOO excited to play and then I went and screwed my ankle up. I will probably be a month before I can play again, and I will have to wear ankle supports so it doesn't happen again.

Allen is slowly getting accustomed to the overnight schedule. It still really stinks, but it's not as hard as it was.

We had plans to go to Sturgeon this weekend, then those plans were cancelled because we thought Allen had to work on Sunday, then the plans are back on again since they changed the work schedule and now he doesn't have to work. We're glad because Dustin will be in Sturgeon this weekend. We haven't seen him since New Years. I guess we're gonna have a little bit of a birthday party for my hubby. It will be good to see everyone.

Deja Vu?

Funny work story of the day,

Today I had a guy call in that I was pretty sure I had talked to yesterday. He asked about the exact same thing he asked about yesterday. I gave him the exact same explanation as I did yesterday, thinking how odd that I had had this EXACT same phone call yesterday. (I checked the phone call history, and sure enough, it was me he talked to.) So, me being the concerned customer advocate that I am. I try to probe this guy to try and see if there was something else I could help him with , that maybe he wasn't asking the right questions, or not understanding my answer. So, I asked him if he was having trouble with his provider of services over billing him or something, or did he have additional questions, was there something that we had gone over that he didn't understand that I could go over again (for the 3rd time) for him. His answer was no, that he understood me perfectly yesterday. He was just calling back again today because he figured he would get a different customer service representative and he just wanted to make sure that he would get the same answer today, as what I gave him yesterday!!!!!!!!!! I really didn't know what to make of this...LOL! I'm pretty sure I'm insulted though lol.

Hope everyone else is having a better week at work than what I've had. Can't wait til the end of the day tomorrow. LONGEST WEEK EVER!

Typical Idol Tuesday

Well, it's that time of week again already...American Idol Tuesday...Josh of course came over for dinner. Nothing special tonight...in fact we went lazy with frozen pizza, but basically we had to because we had an appointment to get out taxes done at HnR Block at 6p.m., but the lady we had the appointment with was busy with another guy until almost 6:30p.m.! So it took half an hour longer than we expected. Oh well, no harm done, tax return soon to be deposited in the bank! YAY! Down payment for the car. Right now we are looking at the option of a Honda Civic instead of the Hyundai because we might be able to get a good deal on one at Dene Lambkin. Allen is at work, Josh is in the living room playing guitar, and I'm waiting for the loaf of Mango Banana Bread that I'm baking in the oven to get done so I can go to bed.

Wonderful work story of the day...lady calls...gives me her name and says, "I need new ID cards, ok?" AND then proceeds to almost hang up before I'm able to get any truly IDENTIFYING information on her. Again with the whole having to be an A++ pyschic to perform my job. I don't care how unique you think your name is, I can almost guarantee you there is another person with your name in the system. So, I guess I could just send new ID cards to all 50 "Kim Smith's" in the system and hope that you get one too... (NO, that was not her name, just an example...)

We had a great weekend in Sturgeon, it was soooooo much fun to hang out with Matt and Nicole Saturday night. We had a blast. It was really good to see Allen's parents too!